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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSTRMeeting Notes 7.23.24pdfJuly 23, 2024 Short Term Rental Committee Meeting Notes Attending: John Stype, Anne Smith, Greg Doroski, Jill Doherty, Gwynn Schroeder, Jack Squicciarini, Ben Johnson, Cheryle Amara, Arthur Bloom, Mark Terry, Mara Cerezo, Heather Lanza Approved the minutes from the last meeting. Special Town Board meeting is the best way to proceed - potentially August 13th if the committee is ready with the presentation. This is the final review of what we will recommend to the Town Board. Reviewed the document handed out entitled “Short-Term Rental Committee Considerations. Everyone agreed on the Purpose/Guiding Principles 1. Definitions a. Short-term rental - yes agreed to the definition b. Year-round rental: Yes, that is good definition c. ADU rental - make sure it is clear that they are not included. Put that in exclusions along with hotels, etc. (and when we change d. Add more definitions including primary residence. Non-primary residence, natural person as we see it (a person, how to get around the LLC situation) • This all needs to go into Zoning Chapter 280, and then Rental permits section would also include it. 2. What will be allowed a. STR’s must get a permit - yes agreed b. Primary residence “add in your home” or “entire home” not including an ADU. Address which is allowed for primary residents. Can only have one per parcel. Make sure this is very clear in the code that only one of the two can be an STR. Only one per parcel. Put that in the definitions ) Define what is primary residence in definitions Require disclosure of who is in the LLC (an LLC is considered a natural person - we have to figure out how to get an actual person.) c. Non-primary - 1% max per hamlet. All agreed that is a good number i. Lottery - it is renewable in perpetuity with rules 1. Have to use it as such 2. If it isn’t used for a year, they lose the permit ii. Permit 1. Only one permit per person a. One person can’t have more than one b. Non-transferable - The new homeowner would not be entitled to the STR permit c. d. No subletting & house shares 3. Administration Considerations a. Tax and Fees i. Require enrollment with SC for hotel tax 1. How this happens needs to be figured out. ii. How will the STate law affect all this? 1. Could go with State law 2. Or go with our own law a. Incorporate the good parts of the State law iii. Set appropriate fees based on admin and enforcement costs. 1. Different costs for primary residence vs. non-primary 2. Back into the fees by assessing the costs to the Town to implement this new STR code a. Building Dept personnel b. Software to help administer c. Code enforcement personnel d. Attorneys? b. Application & Renewal i. We left it to the Board to choose the options outlined in the considerations c. Display Requirements - yes d. Good Neighbor Guidebook - yes 4. Safety Considerations Make it clear the managing agent is responsible right in the legislation - give that teeth. All agreed that is a very important point. (Jack’s point about this) 5. Enforcement & Compliance a. Add fire dept for emergency responses (EMT, too), fire marshal to be notified of any violations. b. Different color for the short-term rental permit from year-round permit. c. Violations suggested consequences - 6. Resources and Town-wide Communications Granicus - from Ben Johnson. Suffolk County already bought into this. $37,000 per year. We can build this into the fees. Could be Granicus or some other product. Village isn’t paying for it. IMA isn’t allowed by them. They won’t cut us a deal on this due to their service model. AirDNA only gives rough numbers, but doesn’t distinguish from hotel rooms. From Arthur: Get the data. How many homes per hamlet Do Assessors have that in RPS? Does GIS have this info fairly up to date? How many home per hamlet have rental permits? How accurate is the spreadsheet Building keeps? Can we add this to Municity? How many rental permits are there now? How accurate is the spreadsheet Building keeps? HL: But we know we need to clean up the process for tracking rental permits - we can use Municity for this and that should be mandated. Arthur says he knows where all of these are (more than 1000 of these houses being rented out now). There will be a lot of angry people. The people who need housing will never be able to afford the houses being rented as short-term rentals now. No working families will benefit. STR term: is that replacing transient rental in the code? Yes. This is not Montauk in 2015 - Rentals are not a real problem for bad behavior. The complaints are driven by neighbors. From Arthurs point on Complaints are difficult to enforce and our enforcement is complaint- driven now HL: Hopefully our system can be changed so enforcement for this is less complaint-driven and more proactive. Arthur is concerned about a war being spurred by people that have been illegally doing this and will no longer be able to do so as we improve the rules and enforcement. What will be grandfathered in? Committee: That’s ok - we care about our residents. HL: We need to integrate the rental data into Municity Reminder of Future Dates a. Draft Report due next week (or end of this week) i. Send to Katie Hodgson? b. Draft presentation due to be shared with committee end of next week c. Final report to Town Board send ahead of August 13th ( a week before) d. Presentation to Town Board on August 13th (?) Morning preferred Presentation to Town Board - Wait for the end until questions! Suggestion from Anne.4 No other meeting needed before Town Board. Can share the final report and draft presentation with committee via e-mail. Ben said we can participate in the Granicus presentations and he is meeting with them again. Gwynn: Board presentation recommendation: include in our presentation the process we followed (briefly).